<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>followed all the way to the graveyard by Pandelion</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28440537">followed all the way to the graveyard</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandelion/pseuds/Pandelion'>Pandelion</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Post-Canon, lack of tags is both intentional and also due to lack of content to tag for, note at the end for the tags i'm not including here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:13:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,536</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28440537</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandelion/pseuds/Pandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The whole of Hueco Mundo feels it. The sudden press of reiatsu too monstrous to be a menos making its way home. The bone-deep surety that there is a new predator on the scene.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>101</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>followed all the way to the graveyard</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The whole of Hueco Mundo feels it. The sudden press of reiatsu too monstrous to be a menos making its way home. The bone-deep surety that there is a new predator on the scene.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Grimmjow is in Las Noches at the time, theoretically to help Harribel and Nelliel assess the structure to see if any of it can still be used now that the Quincies have been eradicated again. In reality, it’s been him and Nelliel taking potshots at any bit of architecture that reminds them of Aizen, Nnoitra, or that they just don’t like the look of, while Harribel watches and occasionally critiques their techniques.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the reiatsu hits, it’s just as Nelliel’s cero doble hits a particularly large tower and all three of them flinch back as if the tower is the source of it. The rubble settles, but the reiatsu doesn’t disperse and Grimmjow’s got a hand on Pantera when he looks at the girls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Vasto lorde?” Nelliel asks, looking concerned. The natural ecosystem had been wrecked in recent history, between Aizen’s experiments and the Quincies’ actions and it’ll take time for Hueco Mundo to recover. They hadn’t figured that there were enough surviving adjuchas to produce a vasto lorde so soon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Harribel says, looking out over the crumbled wall to the desert beyond. “No, that’s not a vasto lorde. Not quite.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then what is it?” Grimmjow growls. His skin is practically crawling, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. The reiatsu is terrible, dark and roiling like whoever it belongs to is on the warpath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It feels like an arrancar,” Harribel says after a long, tense moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Grimmjow and Nelliel exchange a look. A natural arrancar is even less likely than a vasto lorde right now. “But...there aren’t any arrancar left,” Nelliel says. “Aside from us, I mean. Right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was the assumption,” Harribel says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, what, we go find it?” Grimmjow asks. He’s itching to go, to find out what’s putting out that much power, see if it’s something worth testing his sword against. Travel between the realms has been...discouraged, to put it politely, in order to allow everyone time to recuperate and rebuild, and Harribel and Nelliel take a lot of antagonizing before they’ll deign to draw swords against him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And never mind the possibility of going to the living world just yet. He’d probably be attacked as soon as he poked his nose out of the garganta and not in a good way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harribel hesitates, clearly thinking it over. Grimmjow considers it very mature of him to wait her out instead of heading off on his own. With just the three of them left, they haven't really bothered figuring out who's technically in charge, but Harribel has been at the forefront of their few diplomatic interactions with the shinigami.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Feels like an oxymoron, hollows engaging in diplomatic relations, but this is apparently their existence now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes," Harribel decides. She glances at them. "All of us?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Of course," Grimmjow says, teeth bared. Nelliel rolls her eyes, but nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They step off into sonído together, heading out towards where the reiatsu is thicker, more concentrated. Pantera is quiet in the back of Grimmjow’s mind, which is strange enough to make him cautious as they draw closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The reiatsu swirls around them, suddenly thick like they’ve been noticed and the owner is feeling them out. It tastes burnt in the back of Grimmjow’s throat, like blood and steel, and he snarls. Then it pulls back, retreating, flowing back towards its source, and they’re left to chase after it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A moment later, Grimmjow skids to a stop, eyes wide. Nelliel and Harribel join him half a second later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From here, the maybe-arrancar is a dark figure, all flowing robes and goring horns pointed up to the moon, the narrow slash of a sword stretching from hand to sand. It turns its head when they arrive, then it flickers, the step of sonído almost too fast to follow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It reappears in front of them, standing right there, scant meters away, all that reiatsu pulled in so tight that the reishi around its form is distorted like a mirage, golden eyes fixed on them, horns tipped down in silent threat, all night black and bone white and blood red.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that…?” Nelliel doesn’t finish the sentence, but Grimmjow doesn’t entirely blame her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not a form Grimmjow recognizes, but he’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not recognize the color of the hair that’s waving in the breeze or the black blade that lifts to point at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grins, all of his teeth on display, fingers tight around Pantera’s hilt. “Finally ready for that fight, Kurosaki?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Needle teeth part and all that comes out is the distorted scream of a hunting hollow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, you bastard, we’ll see who eats who in the end,” Grimmjow says and he draws Pantera, rips his fingers down the length of her blade, absorbs her back into himself on an inhale.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even this close, even with identifying the new hollow, the reiatsu is almost a stranger, too dark and violent, none of the red tinge that Grimmjow remembers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he doesn't have time to ponder the differences. Kurosaki blurs into movement and Grimmjow's reflexive speed - heightened in resurrección - is all that saves him from losing his head. Literally. He jerks back, eyes on the blade as it slices through the space his neck had occupied a fraction of a second before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Grimmjow strikes out, claws ripping blue with burning reishi, but all he catches is the snap of Kurosaki’s robe as the bastard flickers away again. He snarls, follows him claws first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He loses track of Harribel and Nelliel, chasing Kurosaki’s afterimage across the sand. He’s faster, knows he’s faster, but Kurosaki’s got the advantage of being in front. Until he isn’t, blade sliding against Grimmjow’s forearm even as Grimmjow spins because the bastard got behind him, came up in his blind spot.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>This time, his claws catch and tear, fabric and skin parting, and when they recoil again, there is blood staining the shihakushō, tatters of fabric blowing loose. He grins, flicks blood off of his claws, ignores the wet warmth spreading down his other arm. “Should have aimed for my neck again,” he taunts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurosaki just shrieks again, wordless hunger and rage that echoes against Grimmjow’s bones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They clash again and again, sonído-fast and neither of them pulling their blows. It’s everything Grimmjow could have wanted, an all-out battle, no holds barred, every clash of their swords or their reiatsu changing the landscape.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first, they seem almost evenly matched. Grimmjow’s speed against the sheer strength of Kurosaki’s blows. But the hits add up and black reiatsu burns in every wound, and eventually the scale tips and Grimmjow falters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s tiny, barely more than a shift of his weight. But golden eyes see it and the black blade slips into the opening that Grimmjow didn’t mean to make.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets his claws up, but that hungry blade never reaches them. It clangs instead against the flat of Tiburon, Gamuza braced crosswise, Kurosaki’s blade caught in the vee between them, inches from Grimmjow’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Grimmjow snarls, ready to tell them off for interfering in his fight, but neither of them are looking at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take the mask off,” Harribel says, low, eyes fixed on his opponent. Nelliel is silent, but her chin is tucked in, head down like she’s considering headbutting Kurosaki like the goat she is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurosaki hasn’t moved, eyes fixed on Grimmjow, horns forward, excess reishi seeping like smoke out from around the edges of the mask. For a long moment, he’s still as the grave, frozen mid-strike.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then the sword jerks back, the pommel hitting the mask square between the eyes, cracking it. Another impact and a piece breaks off, followed by another and another until almost the whole thing is falling off. The only piece that remains is one of the horns, anchored to a small piece of bone mask that ends right above one golden eye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Under the mask, Kurosaki’s face is familiar enough - a little thinner, a little older - but his eyes are hollow gold-and-black, the markings on the mask apparently reflected as estigma, thick streaks of blood red that fall from hairline to chin and down his neck and under the edges of his robes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first time, Grimmjow realizes that the dark circle high on Kurosaki’s chest isn’t another bit of estigma, that it’s his hole. It almost looks wrong, out of place, an aberration for someone who has always been so </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurosaki smiles, one side of his mouth ticking up in wry humor. “Ah, sorry about that,” he says. “Been a while.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t fucking apologize,” Grimmjow snarls, pushing through their swords to jab a finger at Kurosaki’s chest. “But what the fuck is this shit?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurosaki looks down at the hole in his chest, free hand coming up to touch the edges of it. “Huh.” He looks around. “This isn’t Soul Society.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No shit,” Grimmjow says. “And that’s not an explanation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gold eyes find his again, wide and a little confused. “I...I think I died,” Kurosaki says.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Spoilery tags: Major Character Death, but he (sort of) gets better, if better can be defined as becoming a hollow</p><p> </p><p>This was supposed to be a bit longer than it is, but the characters decided to go the way they did, so it's ending a bit sooner than I had planned.  *shrug*<br/>If anyone would like to take the idea and run with it, you have my full permission.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>